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BOB DYLAN
Santa Monica 1979
The Lost and Found Mike the MICrophone Tapes Vol Five [Mike Millard first gen via JEMS, 2CD]
Live at the Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA; November 18, 1979. Very good to excellent audience recording.
From the wikipedia:
In February 1978, Dylan initiated a 10-month World Tour that consisted of 114 concerts in ten countries. On June 15, Dylan released the album Street-Legal, which received poor reviews from most American critics. Performances on his world tour also received negative reviews. The physical demands of touring were also taking a toll on the artist. During a concert on November 17 in San Diego, someone from the audience threw a small silver cross on stage.
Towards the end of his 1978 World Tour, Dylan began performing a new song during sound checks called “Slow Train Coming” - a song with overly Christian lyrics. During the final concert of the tour on December 16, 1978 in Hollywood, Florida, he performed another new song called “Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others)”, with lyrics centered around a Biblical passage from Matthew 7:12, “All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you also must likewise do to them; this, in fact, is what the Law and the Prophets mean.”
According to Dylan, a turning point came one night in late 1978 when he received a “vision and a feeling” that his born-again Christian girlfriend Mary Alice Artres believed was a “visit from Jesus himself”. Dylan later said, “Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.”
Typically, the Gospel Tour shows in 1979 opened with vocalist Regina Havis stepping to the microphone and delivering a monologue on Christian faith. She was then joined on stage by vocalist Helena Springs, pianist Terry Young, and his wife Mona Lisa Young who performed a half dozen gospel songs, such as “If I Got My Ticket Lord”, “It’s Gonna Rain”, “Do Lord, Remember Me”, “Look Up And Live By Faith”, and “Oh Freedom”.
After a brief interlude, Dylan and his backing band emerged and performed typically a 17-song set consisting of songs from the album Slow Train Coming and additional new Christian songs, most of which would end up on his follow-up album Saved.
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Thanks to Mike Millard for the recording; JEMS for the efforts; and to mjk5510 for sharing this at Dime.
Click here for the lossless flacs.
Original notes:
JEMS is pleased to release the fifth in a series of recordings made by legendary taper Mike Millard, AKA Mike the MICrophone, best known for his masters of Led Zeppelin in and around LA circa 1975-77.
Installment No. 5 jumps ahead 17 months but a world apart, as Dylan has converted to Christianity and taken to the road with a set of all new gospel-tinged material, completely ignoring his musical past in deference to his enlightened present.
The Gospel Tour, as it is known, began November 1 at the Fox Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, where Dylan kicked off a 14-night residency. This concert in Santa Monica was the first show that followed the Warfield run and opening night of four in the Los Angeles area. Other than going electric, I would posit there is no other moment in Dylan’s career that reverberated like this seemingly out-of-nowhere shift into what might best be described as a musical tent revival with Bob himself as preacher and soul saver. And because of that, the Gospel Tour is divisive: For some fans, it was the jumping off point; for others, they climbed aboard the slow train coming.
Dylan’s on-stage dialogue at times sparked confrontations with an audience that, by and large, wasn’t sure how to reconcile what they were seeing and hearing with all that came before it. I didn’t see the Gospel Tour in person; my first Dylan show was still six years away. As such, the radical shift that took place in 1979 doesn’t have the same impact for me when revisited in hindsight. On its own merits, the Gospel Tour offers richly satisfying performances and a focused Dylan who was leading the crusade every night.
And talk about a set list that challenged his audience. Dylan didn’t perform a single song from his back catalog, instead filling the set with all eight songs from Slow Train Coming; another seven from its companion, Saved, which would be released the following year; the still unreleased “Blessed Be the Name”; plus several gospel numbers performed by the show’s back-up singers: Regina Havis, Helena Springs and Mona Lisa Young.
To our ears, Millard nails it this night. As usual, he’s close to the PA with a quiet crowd around him, and the AKGs + Uher yield a great pull in his capable hands. It is a pleasure to listen to.
Lossless Bob has six entries for this show which tie back to two underlying recordings. In this case, Millard’s tape does match the complete recording from which the bootleg Live By Faith was derived. So instead of an uncirculated source, we have an upgrade, and while the bootleg and circulating copies are very good, we think you’ll find this fresh, first-generation transfer from reel sharper and cleaner, with less hiss in the quiet parts and more detail in the louder parts.
If you’d like to learn more about Mike the MICrophone, the links below offer a glimpse of his story.
Millard’s Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Millard
The best article written about Millard has been deleted from the original website but is reprinted here:
http://www.classicrockforums.com/forum/f6/led-zeppelin-official-thread-6185/index164.html
Thanks again to WG for finding the tapes and to SG for providing JEMS with another fascinating chapter of taping history. Also, JEMS continues to depend on mjk5510 for his skilled assistance in getting these recordings into your hands. He is a vital part of the process at this point.
Here’s to the late, great Mike the MICrophone and to finding more lost tapes.
BK for JEMS
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Lineage:
Recording Info: AKG-451E microphones > Uher CR-240 cassette recorder
JEMS 2014 Transfer: first-generation reel copy (3-3/4 IPS) made by Mike Millard for SG > Otari 5050 mkII azimuth-adjusted transfer > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 (24/96) capture > pitch correction > iZotope RX MBIT+ resample 16/44.1 > Peak Pro XT (volume smoothing / edit / index) > xACT 2.21 > FLAC
Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (224 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.
Please Do Not Hammer The Links. Due to the size of some of the files, please be very patient when downloading the tracks. It could be that the server was very busy. The tracks should still be around. Please try again later. Kindly email us at mybigo@bigozine.com if you encounter persistent problems downloading the files.
Disc 1
Track 101. Regina Havis Monologue 2:26 (4.1MB)
Track 102. I’ve Got My Ticket Lord - Part A 1:24 (2.4MB)
Track 103. I’ve Got My Ticket Lord - Part B 3:28 (5.8MB)
Track 104. It’s Gonna Rain 3:54 (6.6MB)
Track 105. Do Lord Remember Me 2:54 (4.9MB)
Track 106. Look Up And Live 4:31 (7.6MB)
Track 107. Oh Freedom 5:16 (8.8MB)
Track 108. This Train 4:03 (6.8MB)
Bob Dylan and his band
Track 109. Gotta Serve Somebody 6:43 (11.3MB)
Track 110. I Believe In You 4:52 (8.2MB)
Track 111. When You Gonna Wake Up 5:55 (10.0MB)
Track 112. When He Returns 5:09 (8.6MB)
Track 113. Man Gave Names To All The Animals 5:31 (9.3MB)
Track 114. Precious Angel 5:47 (9.7MB)
62 mins
Disc 2
Track 201. Slow Train 7:09 (12.0MB)
Track 202. Covenant Woman 5:49 (9.8MB)
Track 203. What Are You Doing With Your Heart 3:31 (5.9MB)
Track 204. Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking 4:57 (8.3MB)
Track 205. Do Right To Me Baby 4:32 (7.6MB)
Track 206. Solid Rock 4:50 (8.1MB)
Track 207. Saving Grace 4:44 (8.0MB)
Track 208. Saved 5:15 (8.8MB)
Track 209. What Can I Do For You 5:49 (9.8MB)
Track 210. In The Garden 8:20 (14.0MB)
Track 211. Band Introduction 1:35 (2.7MB)
Track 212. Blessed Be The Name 3:53 (6.5MB)
Track 213. Pressing On 6:55 (11.6MB)
68 mins
Click on the links to order Slow Train Coming
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